The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. — D.H. Lawrence

A recent commenter from the UK took issue with postings here arguing that George W. Bush ought to have done more to mobilize and involve the American public in the Iraq War. Insisting that the Invasion of Iraq should not be viewed as an appropriate action in the War on Terror begun in response to 9/11, she wrote, referrring to the text of the author I quoted and linked: “are you suggesting Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the Twin Towers thingie?”

Of course, the specific causus belli of the US Invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s persistent violation of the Gulf War Cease Fire Agreement and his continuing breach of UN Resolutions, requiring him to submit to weapons inspections and surrender materials known to be in his possession. But grounds for suspicion of possible Iraqi involvement in 9/11 certainly do exist.

There is also the Telegraph news story, published back on 14 Dec 2003, that 9/11 hijack leader Mohammed Atta underwent some form of training for the 9/11 attacks at the hands of the infamous Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal in Baghdad during the summer of 2001.

Abu Nidal had been a guest of Saddam Hussein since 1999, occupying a villa supplied by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret service, in the wealthy al-Masbah neighborhood of
al-Jadriyah, Baghdad. Abu Nidal was killed 14 August 2002 by an Iraqi Mukhabarat assassination unit.

Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.

The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment – believed to be uranium – that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

“We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam’s involvement with al-Qaeda,” he said. “But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks.”

All this is unproven at the present time, but it would certainly be premature of dismiss these reports out of hand, as the Left has done out of partisan motivation.